‘People’s Parties’: the strangely disturbing backstory of an overlooked Joni Mitchell gem
Joni Mitchell perhaps understands better than anyone else the strange and unexpected moments when inspiration strikes. While some need to feel happy or whole to create music, others wallow in the trenches, finding beauty in tragedy. In many ways, Mitchell exists somewhere in between, thriving in the space where ambiguities give rise to the most intricate stories.
Most of Mitchell’s greatest-ever records have occurred during these in-between stages. At the tail-end of the counterculture movement, when most artists were either hungover from the virtual signalling of peace signs and flower crowns or at a musical impasse, Mitchell swooped in, reminding others of the power of uncertainty. Spearheading this direction was, of course, her personal experiences but also her natural affinity for being a leader.
In these moments, she creates her most raw, open, and honest art, singing about matters of the heart with a voice, tone, and vernacular that feel almost improvised—like the roughest etchings in a journal at sunrise. After all, Mitchell’s brand of darkness rarely stems from the melancholy of lonely nights but rather from the reckoning of early mornings, when clarity gives way to a different kind of hurt.
However, not all stories are Mitchell’s own. In fact, many come from the lives of others, pinpricks of themes and emotions Mitchell feels as if they were her own, or moments of unbridled mania when nothing seems to make sense. At least, those are the precise roots that eventually blossomed into ‘People’s Parties’, which Mitchell wrote after witnessing a disturbing scene unfold one night at a party in Los Angeles.
At this party, anyone who is anyone gathered around, partaking in what can only be assumed as the usual LA ruckus that was commonplace at the time. In attendance this particular night was Dutch model Apollonia van Ravenstein, who, according to Jack Nicholson’s then-partner Anjelica Huston, spent a significant portion of the evening strutting around stuck somewhere between crying and laughing.
“[She] has been crying that night – laughing and crying, it was hard to figure out which or why,” Huston recalled in her memoir Watch Me. “She had balanced a lamp side on her head; tears were pouring down her cheeks.” Reportedly, it was eventually revealed that Ravenstein had slept with Nicholson before the party, a one-night stand she evidently didn’t know what to make of.
This turmoil is reflected in Mitchell’s lyrics as she sings about all-consuming paranoia burdened by “frightened silence” and the inability to wake up from a bad dream. “I’m just living on nerves and feelings, with a weak and a lazy mind,” Mitchell sings, recounting the turmoil of frequenting parties where all that is felt is everything and nothing. A strange situation, but one Mitchell was able to transform into poetic art, reflecting her ability to capture moments in time, no matter how fleeting.
